Badgering Away & TaaaaDaaaaah!

LOL, so tonight was the get together for Kent Pagans to celebrate the Spring Equinox.  A very lovely ritual, involving seeds and germinating plans for the year to come.  And also a goodbye for the very lovely Badger Family, who will be sorely missed when they move.

Kent Pagans asked me to make a gift for the family, and eagerly I said "of course, no problem"...a nd then realised I had mere days to knock something out..... and in the end it turned out I had today!  Today I beavered..sorry, badgered away.... and produced........

 A Badger Shield.   The paw print is an actual badger print that I printed and cut around, although, it ended up a little more spread out than it should have, but I was using hot glue so not a great deal of time to play with the position.

 Really pleased how good the brown felting looks on the back.  This shield is simply a a circle, with black and white segments, and then a cardboard hoop inside, with stuffing (real wool) in the middle to fill out the shield a bit.  And then I hot glued it all together.  I didn't have time to try and sew it together, and honestly, my sewing skills aren't good enough to for something like this anyway.

Really, really pleased how well this turned out.  So much so I may have to make a couple of play shields for the dressing up box for the kids.    Oooh and look at those buttons, aren't they just PERFECT! 


Good luck Badger Family in your new home :D

Spring Equinox/Ostara.

Twas a lovely time.  We ate yummy food, had good company, enjoyed an egg hunt, read from Luna Moon Hare, moved our wheel of the year on, ate a little too much chocolate, made mandelas with new beginning intent for the coming year and then burned them in the fire to release to the universe... all good stuff.

Friday and the weekend.

A massive mix bag.

Smooth....

 

 

 

 

Pondering

Jigsaw puzzle love

Cleaning the brownie pot; Rye style.

Pirates

Man overboard

Kent Pagan Camp

Helping to decorate the Goddess.

I had a lovely photo of the finished sculpture; she was made from leaves and sticks scavanged from the tree lined edges around the campsite, and also the folks that camped, (brave souls, it was flipping cold!), had been beachcombing earlier, and added some wonderful finds - alas, I managed to delete the wrong photo on the camera - and realised far too late that I could have undone the delete. DOH.

We only day visited, and brrrrr it ws cold.  I hadn't anticipated just how cold Saturday was.  I had crocs on and no socks and just a t'shirt and jumper.  I froze my substantial ass off, so we didn't stay as long as we might have.  Instead my friend and I, and Rye all went back to hers for some lovely warming pasta and hot drinks before Rye and me braved the cold again to walk home - (only 5 min walk)..and dive straight upstairs to bed to snuggle under fleeces and the summer duvet.... may need to think about swapping over to my winter duvet soon.

Sunday, alas was a wasted day.  I felt gawd awful.  Terrible sinus headache where I felt so horribly sick if I stood up, so most of the day was spent in bed.  Poor Rye, not the most fun of days for him.  He played with his toys, watched a lot of DVDs and spent a lot of time cuddling me and telling me he loved me.  Bless his cotton socks.

I think I really ought to knock up some meals to chuck in the freezer for "ill days" though.  Meals for him weren't ideal; cornflakes and raisins with milk, pasta, tuna, sweetcorn mixed together with mayonnaise and crumbled up brownie with icecream.  Not that he complained, still I'd prefer to have healthier options on offer for those days when I feel naff - or just too tired to cook.

Baking, parks and handfastings.

Yup, that has been our week so far.

I tried the recipe from "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day," by Jeff Hertzeberg & Zoe Francois.  A revelation.  The bread is delicious.  It's not really made in 5 minutes; but as there's no kneading and the dough is prepared and just needs shaping and resting before baking - well it's an easy way to have delicious fresh bread every day.

First attempt.  The crumb the first time was a little wet - but then I did reduce the time as my oven usually bakes everything super quick... I've discovered leaving the bread in for the full 30 mins produces a crumb that is much more light and fluffy, without burning the crust.

Second attempt - same dough mixture, just a day older; and this time I remembered to dust with flour and slash the top.  Slashing basically allows the dough to rise higher in the oven before the heat kills off the yeast.
And as the oven was already heated up, why not do a batch of muffins too?

All those carbs demand some exercise, so we trundled down to the local park, that recently has been given a bit of a face lift.

When I plan to take the kids out for a picnic, I always tend to plan to go to the Coastal Park or down to the beach... yet this park is five minutes walk away; and includes a wooden climbing pyramid, ropes etc to climb along, there were swings, but they've been taken off; I'm assuming they have been damaged.  Along with fantastic slides, picnic tables with chest boards burnt into the tables, sculptures that can be climbed etc.  Both kids had a fantastic time and protested loudly when I told them it was time to go home.

Yesterday afternoon we went to a Heathen Handfasting.  The happy couple trothed their love before friends, ancestors and their Gods.  Wonderful.  Rye had a wonderful time playing with a friend's five year old son.  They really did get on like a house on fire. 

Rye looked very snazzy in his mirrored waiste coat, green t'shirt and stripy jeans :-)

LOL and pre-handfasting he helped with brownie making by licking out  the pan...

Terrific Thursday :-)

Phew, busy day.

This morning we were out of the door for just after 9:40pm to walk to toddler group.  Lovely morning, Rye had a fantastic time and my charge seemed to enjoy herself too.   Until today I don't think I'd really appreciated just how important it is for Rye, especially now I'm childminding.   He generally plays lovely with C; there is some taking toys off her, sometimes being a little too precious, sometimes being a bit too rough and boisterious, in the main though he does play well with her, and looks forward to her arrival on a morning.  I think perhaps it was so noticeable too because for the past few weeks we haven't been to our usual groups because first of half term and then last week because of chickenpox.

Toddler group and Kidz Planet afford Rye with the opportunity to be a 3yr old without me continually refereeing his play because of C being younger and smaller; and he gets to play with kiddies of similar age to him and older too.  It was rather plain he relished zipping around the hall at toddler group and in the main, being left to get on with the important business of riding a tractor around and around the hall.  Similarly, C clearly enjoyed playing without Rye butting in and taking over. 

And he was in his element at Kidz Planet; racing around, climbing up, sliding down, chasing after the other HE kids, making friends with other kiddies his own age and running around playing "chase me".  And C enjoyed playing in the under 2 area on the slide and the play house etc.  Lovely for me too because my friend with twin boys has started coming along too so we both get to have a natter while also keeping an eye on our kids, (well, charge in my case).   I relish Thursdays a lot, as does Rye :-)

Ohhh and now Spring is making her presence known; (although according to the forecast we might get some snow on Sunday), I shall venture down to the beach again; whole days out of the house - wonderful; and of course days spent in the garden too - looking forward to that because it makes it easier to invite people over - the house is too small; the garden tho, is a pretty decent size :-) I already have plans for play dates and bbqs rattling around in my head lol.




Ohhh and a new weekly activitiy will begin from next Tuesday too.  I have organised swimming at our local pool for the HE group.  Really looking forward to that :-)  Next week will be busy - Monday Fossil Hunting with my local pagan community, Tuesday Swimming, Wednesday - hmmm, haven't decided which grp to try out yet, Thursday Toddler group and then Kidz Planet and Friday... lol, I think Friday we might just stay home.

Kent Pagan Camp

At lunchtime, Rye, Q, J and myself drove over to Kingsdown Campsite to meet up with Kent Pagans on their long weekend camp.  I had hoped to join them in camping but alas, the finances let me down again.

Still, spending the afternoon there was lovely, the campsite its self is beautiful and overlooks the sea, with only a short walk down to the shingle beach.  Rye adored running around the large field with the other child at the camp.  In this photo he is chasing his new friend.  (I've cropped it because I forgot to ask his mum if she was ok with me posting photos).
Rye's new friend introduced him to playing with a frisbee, and I was very impressed how quickly he learned to throw it - of course, there was still much ducking and diving to avoid having one's head thumped - overall though his aim wasn't too bad.

Both children shared/took turns with the frisbee and rackets and spider (no idea, the rackets  had a rubber spider instead of a ball) beautifully with very little interference from myself or B's mum. 

Later we ate our picnic sat on the grass, having a good gossip and just enjoying the lovely sunshine.

All that fresh air and running around and exploring meant that Rye was in bed fast sleep by 7:30pm! 

Midsummer Beach BBQ

Shakespheare's Beach, Dover and Kent Pagans. What a fabulous time. We arived home about 15 minutes ago. Wonderful evening, and the fire was lovely, but then we be pagans, and we love fire lol.

I do so love living near the sea and being near such a lovely bunch of people. Rye, apart from the odd thrown stone in the wrong direction, was fabulous and provided endless entertainment, bless him, he remembered to be cautious around the fire too.